In Support of Gary McKinnon

I’m very saddened to hear the news that Gary McKinnon has lost the latest round in his fight to avoid extradition to the US on charges of computer hacking.

Gary managed, from his home in North London, to hack into several high level US computers and was eventually tracked down. Now the US authorities – in order to make an example of him – want him extradited to the US to face trial.

It may well be that Gary, who suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome, did wrong. However, he did this in England, not in the US, so any trial should take place here. Allowing a British citizen to be tried by a foreign court for an offence he committed here seems to me to be bizarre in the extreme. Our extradition treaty with the US is very uneven in matters like this.

Furthermore, if the US authorities can’t safeguard their IT systems, whose fault is that? They should be paying him as a consultant, not looking to punish him.

If you don't know much about the background to this case, it's worth looking at:

http://freegary.org.uk/

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Mckinnon